Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Jean-Louis Simonet sends word that he has published a critical review of Curt Niccum’s book, The Bible in Ethiopia. The Book of Acts(2014) in J-L. Simonet, ‘Le livre des Actes dans la Bible éthiopienne. A propos d’un livre récent’ BABELAO 5 (2016), 117-125. This is available online here.

NB. The name BABELAO means « Bulletin of the Abelao », more precisely
« Bulletin de l’Académie Belge pour l’Etude des Langues Anciennes et
Orientales » (Bulletin of the Belgian Academy for the Study of Ancient
and Oriental Languages). It is a scholarly online journal, see further here.

Monday, August 29, 2016

The latest issue of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (31.3) has a special section of stemmatics. I would particularly recommend the essays by Barbara Bordalejo and Peter Robinson which were mentioned on the blog here. All of these appear to be freely available for the time being. But I don’t think that will last. Here’s the list of essays:

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Jim West notes a new series on the texts and versions of the Old Testament edited by Jim Aitken:

Announcing a new sub-series of LHBOTS: Texts and Versions of the Hebrew Bible

Texts and Versions of the Hebrew Bible will publish high level studies on the Hebrew text and textual history of the Bible and on the ancient translations. It provides an avenue for discussions focused specifically on the text, language and textual history of the Hebrew Bible and it manuscript traditions. In addition, with the growth in interest in the ancient translations both as evidence of the text of the Bible and as versions of inherent interest in themselves, the series encourages studies of these ancient witnesses, including their textual history, translation technique, exegetical methods and setting.

Monday, August 22, 2016

On 14-16 September I will participate in a conference at the University of Agder in Kristiansand (Norway), Fragments of an Unbelievable Past? Constructions of Provenance, Narratives of Forgery– conference schedule below (not including coffee and meals).

I will present a paper on the famous 19th-century forgerer Constantine Simonides: “Simonides’ New Testament Papyri: Their Production and Purported Provenance.” Since the Friday is devoted to the Gospel of Jesus Wife saga, including the concluding conversation between Prof. Liv Ingeborg Lied (MF, Oslo) and Ariel Sabar about his his recent Atlantic Magazine investigation, I will also attempt to draw some parallels between Simonides and Walter Fritz – the owner of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife fragment (for our earlier post on Fritz, see here). I look forward to the conference very much.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Westcott and Hort and E. C. Colwell are often connected in discussions of singular readings as they should be. But it’s not often appreciated how Colwell inverted WH’s primary purpose for studying singular readings.

For WH, their main interest in singular readings was that their two
prized manuscripts (01 and 03) often stood alone from the rest of the textual
tradition as they knew it. Singular readings did give them access to the proclivities of 01 and 03 (a la Colwell), but this was not then aimed at elucidating transcriptional probability like it was for Colwell. Instead, this exercise was aimed squarely at determining which of 01 and 03’s singular readings had “a better
title to consideration,” i.e., of being original (Intro, p. 233).

For Colwell, the study of singular readings is not only to
“increase skill in the evaluation of that manuscript” (a la WH), but also “to gain knowledge of the habits of a scribe in general ... and thus to increase skill in the evaluation of readings.”* For Colwell, such a study was not aimed at identifying which singulars may
claim originality. Rather, it was to give us access to those readings that we
can be sure are the scribe’s rather than the author’s.

Thus, unlike WH, Colwell’s interest in singulars hinges entirely “on the assumption
that these readings are the creation of the scribe.” As such, they give us access to the work of the scribe as opposed to the
author. In this, Colwell has reversed WH for whom the study of
singular readings was aimed precisely at identifying those singulars that are
the work of the author rather than the scribe.

In other words, both recognize that singular readings can attune us to the scribe’s habits, but each uses this fact to focus on opposite sides of the scribe/author divide. WH are ultimately interested in authorial readings whereas Colwell is really interested in scribal readings. Obviously, this has to do with whether each thinks that singulars may be original. But the difference is still important especially as it comes to “skill in the evaluation of readings.” WH have their own view of how to best attain that and it has nothing to do with singular readings. But more on that another time.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

A week or so ago my carrel-mate here at Tyndale was stumped for who knows how long by a Gothic letter “C” that looked a whole lot like Gothic letter “T” for “targum.”

What finally gave it away was the superscript “Sa” which I thought had to be for “Sahidic.” That meant, of course, that the “T” must actually be a “C.” Sure enough it was. But comparing this “C” in the Hermeneia volume on Ezekiel to BHS’s “T,” you can see the obvious problem. All of this would be avoided if simple Roman letters had been used.

The offending Gothic “C” (left) and “T” (right)

Now, look, I enjoy the wonderful Gothic “P” for papyri as much as anybody. It looks cool and it adds gravitas to what are often scrappy manuscripts. But I say it’s time to banish Gothic letters from our writing and apparatuses for good. They’re bad for electronic searches, they don’t exist in most fonts, and whatever value they once had is gone. They only create confusion. So let’s get rid of them. Who’s with me?

That program, known as the Scholars Initiative, is one of the book’s unique features. The program involves dozens of undergraduate and graduate students who are given the opportunity to help with fresh research on the museum’s artifacts. As someone who has been through this program, I can say that the opportunity it affords to young students is unparalleled. It is a fantastic way to mentor and train students interested in Biblical research.

The risks of involving students in this level of research are (hopefully) mitigated by the tiered structure of the program where students are overseen by scholar-mentors who are, in turn, overseen by the editors of the volumes (here Emanuel Tov). A special shout-out to Michael Johnson who was in the first “class” of the Scholars Initiative with me and who became one of the “principal investigators” in the volume (see p. xiii n. 15).

It is exciting to see this work coming to fruition. Hopefully the Greek volume will follow in the next year or two. (The press release says it “will be published soon.”)

MOTB.SCR.003172 Jeremiah. Showing image manipulation used to read the texts. Images by Bruce and Kenneth Zuckerman and Marilyn Lundberg, West Semitic Research

Table of Contents

Introduction, Text Editions, the Collection of the
Museum of the Bible, Textual and Orthographic Character, Relation to Other Fragments from the Judaean Desert Emanuel Tov

Paleographical and Physical Features of the Dead Sea
Scrolls in the Museum of the Bible Collection: A Synopsis Kipp Davis

I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells. (ESV)

The trickiest part here is grammatical—what should we do with the nominative after ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις when we expect genitives? The commentators will tell you that scribes tried to smooth this by adding αἷς before Ἀντιπᾶς and that’s what we find in the Byzantine text. The syntax still isn’t great since we’re left with a verbless clause, but some have suggested that it is implied.

Others have followed Lachmann’s conjecture of Ἀντιπᾶ (the “proper” genitive of the name) suggesting that the sigma arose from dittography involving the article: αντιπα ο μαρτυϲ → αντιπαο ο μαρτυϲ → αντιπαϲ ο μαρτυϲ. That is one too many steps for my liking though.

Where things get more interesting is in the Syriac. Here is what we find in the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) edition which is also the basis for the recent Gorgias edition. I’ve highlighted the main differences with the Greek:

I know where you dwell, the place of Satan’s throne, and you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days when you contended, even my faithful witness, because every witness of mine is faithful, the one who was killed among you [omit].

So we have (1) the verb “you contended” substituted for the name “Antipas,” (2) the long addition of the phrase “because every witness of mine is faithful,” and (3) the omission of the final clause “where Satan dwells”—none of which you will find in the NA/UBS editions. You have to go all the way to Hoskier (or at least a footnote in Beale) to find the addition.

The first variant has a good explanation in that Ἀντιπᾶς is sometimes spelled αντειπας and this could be read as an Aorist form of ἀντιλέγω. Hence we get ܚܪܐ in Syriac which means “resist, dispute, contend,” etc. in the ethpeal. Tischendorf tries to explain the Syriac as a translator’s failed attempt to render the name. But explaining it as a different way to read the Greek is much more viable especially because Hoskier lists several Greek minuscules that seem to accent it as the verb (ἀντεἶπας rather than ἀντειπᾶς).

The third variant, the omission of the last phrase, is a bit easier to explain in Syriac than in Greek. In Syriac, it looks like a case of homoioteleuton involving ܐܠܐ at the beginning of v. 14. The phrase is included in the Harklean Syriac manuscripts, so, apparently, it didn’t last long. It’s only attested by two minuscules in Greek perhaps just by accident.

The second variant, the addition, is the most surprising of the three. It is also not unique to the Syriac, being found in over a dozen Greek minuscules. This suggests that the Syriac is not innovating but rather reflecting its Greek Vorlage. In his edition, Gwynn argues the same but still calls the longer reading an “interpolation.” What he doesn’t mention but should have is that its omission has an obvious explanation by way of homoioteleution, the scribe’s eye jumping from πιστός to πιστός (cf. GA 2028).

Rev 2.13 in GA 2028 (15th cent.) showing the longer reading.

What’s important is that the Syriac shows that this reading has much earlier support than the Greek evidence alone would suggest. It goes back at least to AD 616 when the Harklean Syriac was completed and probably earlier since the Crawford MS (the basis for the BFBS and Gorgias editions) likely predates the Harklean. This is thus a good example of late Greek manuscripts preserving much earlier readings. It also illustrates the benefit of keeping an eye on the versions.

None of this made it into the sermon, you’ll be relieved to know. But I wonder if some of these readings shouldn’t make it into the Nestle apparatus. The longer reading in particular belongs there not only for its exegetical significance, but because, at least transcriptionally, it can explain the shorter reading.

It is one of the editors—K. Aland—who is responsible for the editing of this text. Of course, all major issues will be advised by the circle of editors and co-editors. But it seemed impossible to determine the text in a voting system by majority decision. This is indeed fashionable [modern] (and in the hand editions of the Bible Societies even understandable), but such a procedure contradicts not only all philological principles but it also leads in all experiences to an average text. (p. 166)

If I have my chronology right, this was written when Aland was already part of the UBS committee. Unfortunately, he doesn’t explain what makes the difference between a hand-edition and a major critical edition such that a committee is good for one and not the other. It seems a bit inconsistent.

Wednesday, August 03, 2016

The study of those manuscripts that contain the text of all of the Greek Scriptures is still relatively underdeveloped. There are still plenty of questions to be asked about the Greek pandects of the 4th (Vaticanus, Sinaiticus) and 5th centuries (Alexandrinus, Ephraemi rescriptus), but also about some of the later ones.

Take minuscules Gregory-Aland (GA) 205 and what used to be called GA 205abs (for Abschrift), relabelled as GA 2886. It was thought that GA 2886 is a copy of GA 205, but I seem to know that Maurice Robinson disputes this for the gospel of John (I hope he can supply us with the correct citation). And I also find this in Alison Welsby's 2012 Birmingham dissertation later published as A Textual Study of Family 1 in the Gospel of John (Berlin; Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2014) who says that on both textual and circumstantial grounds rather the reverse is true. [It is therefore a shame that Amy Anderson in her study of family 1 in Matthew was deceived by the consensus and only considered GA 205, but that's what happens.]

Both manuscripts were copied in the second half of the 15th century for cardinal Bessarion, who donated them to the Venice library, where they still are. GA 205 is Gr. Z. 5, and GA 2886 is Gr. Z. 6. Interestingly, when it comes to the only other part of these manuscripts for which I happen to stumble over a bit of information, the situation is different. In the introduction to 2 Esdras in the Göttingen edition, Hanhart gives an exemplar for both of these manuscripts (in the Rahlfs list GA 205 = 68; GA 2886 = 122). That in itself is quite interesting, because having the parent and the child opens up all sorts of interesting areas of study. The exemplar for Venice Bibl. Marc. Gr. 5 for the section 1 - 2 Esdras, Esther, Judith, Tobit, 1 – 3 Maccabees is another manuscript in the same library, namely Bibl. Marc. Gr. 16 (Rahlfs 731), a 13th century manuscript. For Venice Bibl. Marc. Gr. 6, for the same section, the exemplar is a different manuscript, one that is reasonably well known, namely B, Codex Vaticanus. As this copy was made before 1468, this is an interesting part of the late-mediaeval history and use of the big 4th century Vatican Bible.

Just going by what we read in the handbooks on New Testament textual criticism, one would never have sensed that the formerly anonymous 205abs had been in such close contact with one of the more famous witnesses to the Greek Bible - the latter may have been its direct parent in parts of it.

The question is of course what will happen when we compare these three whole Bibles in their totality.

Blurb: It is widely believed that the early Christians copied their texts themselves without a great deal of expertise, and that some copyists introduced changes to support their theological beliefs. In this volume, however, Alan Mugridge examines all of the extant Greek papyri bearing Christian literature up to the end of the 4th century, as well as several comparative groups of papyri, and concludes that, on the whole, Christian texts, like most literary texts in the Roman world, were copied by trained scribes. Professional Christian scribes probably became more common after the time of Constantine, but this study suggests that in the early centuries the copyists of Christian texts in Greek were normally trained scribes, Christian or not, who reproduced those texts as part of their trade and, while they made mistakes, copied them as accurately as any other texts they were called upon to copy.

Monday, August 01, 2016

International SBL finished a few weeks ago in Seoul, South Korea. I did not go, but Jacob Peterson did and he has kindly agreed to summarize the text critical papers he attended for us. Thanks, Jacob.

Yonsei University

The International Society of Biblical Literature meeting was held at Yonsei University in Seoul South, Korea from 3–7 July this year. This was both my first time visiting Asia and my first ISBL. The culinary and cultural experiences alone were worth the visit and I could write a much more interesting series of posts on sampling Korean street food and visiting the DMZ. But since this is the ETC blog, I suppose I’ll stick to covering the two textual criticism sessions.

While I don’t have prior experience to compare against, there was enough interest in the textual criticism sessions that some attendees were left standing against the wall or sitting on the floor. I apologise in advance if I have misrepresented anyone’s paper or missed out on a key element from their presentation.

The two text-critical sessions were back-to-back on 5 July and fell under the heading “Working with Biblical Manuscripts (Textual Criticism).” The first session had the theme “Greek New Testament Manuscripts” and featured three presenters.

Pasi Hyytiäinen, University of Helsinki
Pasi presented a paper titled “Textual Evolution in Acts 5:38–39 of D and the Effect of Social-Historical Context.” In the paper, Pasi demonstrated a new way for using data from the CBGM to investigate the textual history of the text present in Codex Bezae. In particular, he examined how the various manuscripts attesting the expansions of Acts 5:38–39 present in Bezae reveal the stages of development of that text. Additionally, he showed that a careful study of the social-historical context can potentially reveal explanations for the expansions; in this case, he pointed out changing attitudes among Christians towards Gamaliel as evidenced by the Gospel of Gamaliel.

Jacob W. Peterson, University of Edinburgh
Next was my own paper, “New Readings in Papyrus 46,” in which I examined the text of P46 in Col. 1.23 and 2.7. Based on the new images produced by CSNTM, I argued that P46 contains a previously unknown singular reading, αμετακινητοι, in Col. 1.23. Then I argued for understanding P46 as reading εν τη πιϲτει in Col. 2.7, which is an instance of P46 joining with Sinaiticus against Vaticanus.

Didier Lafleur, Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes
Dr. Lafleur presented his ongoing research on the manuscript collection at the Albanian National Archives in a paper titled, “Working with Biblical Manuscripts in a Non-Biblical Context: A Detailed Approach of the Greek New Testament Manuscripts from Albania.” He discussed some of the past research conducted on the manuscripts, but also the preservation of the manuscripts by the Albanians and, more recently, the Chinese. Dr. Lafleur surmised that one of the reasons these manuscripts of Christian scriptures were not destroyed was because they were now viewed as cultural pieces demonstrating the skill of Albanian preservationists.

The second session had the theme “Jewish Bible, Christian Old Testament and the New Testament, and Early Christian Literature” and was slated for four speakers. Unfortunately, Timothy B. Sailors (Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen) was unable to attend and present his paper on “Manuscript Witnesses to Early Christian Literature: A New Project on Texts Preserved in the Languages of the Christian Orient.”

InChol Yang, Claremont School of Theology
InChol presented a paper titled, “A Text Critical Analysis of the First Taunt Song in Hab. 2:5-8,” that focused on using paratextual features in manuscripts as guides. In particular, he pointed to the spacing and line gaps present in some manuscripts of Habakkuk as a means to understanding divisions in the text which ultimately aids in interpretation.

Ronald van der Bergh, University of Pretoria
Dr. van der Bergh gave a presentation on “OT Awareness of Ps. 109:1 (LXX) in Codex Bezae.” In his talk he discussed the eight citations of Ps. 109:1 in Codex Bezae and how they differ. His analysis showed that the scribe did not show a tendency towards harmonization and had an apparent lack of awareness of the LXX form of the text.

Stephen C. Carlson, Australian Catholic University
Dr. Carlson gave the concluding presentation titled, “The Text and Timing of the Antioch Incident (Gal. 2.11–14)” which I believe was an expansion of the section from his monograph dealing with the same passage. Dr. Carlson argued convincingly for the reading τινας … ἦλθεν over τινας … ἦλθον in Gal. 2.12. The larger result of this text-critical decision is that it resolves the exegetical problem surrounding the timing of the Antioch incident.

I very much enjoyed my time in Korea and getting to interact with the other participants. I look forward to seeing everyone in San Antonio for national SBL… I call dibs on the Brill display.